topic Re: sas variable incorrect diaplay in SAS Programming

sas variable incorrect diaplay

NadiaK — Wed, 09 Aug 2017 19:43:32 GMT

Hello all!

I am new to sas and I am stumped with one of my numeric variables.

So, I have a variable name 'sampleid' which is 14 digits long- no space or dots or commas. When I imported my csv file to sas the sampleid of 020613020202021 looks like this: 2.02E+12. Can anyone help with that?

Thanks!

Re: sas variable incorrect diaplay

ballardw — Wed, 09 Aug 2017 19:51:27 GMT

Proc Import in addition to guessing variable types defaults to a "best" format for non-date or time variables.

You can get more digits displayed by assigning a format with more allowed digits such as best14. or F14.

Note that your variable is being treated as numeric so your leading zeroes would require a Z14. format to show them.

You can change the format a number of ways. Best is at reading.

Data mytable;

set mytable;

format sampleid z14.;

run;

is inefficient but simple. Proc datasets can modify formats of variables in place. Or the point-and-click on the table column header should allow setting the format.

Re: sas variable incorrect diaplay

NadiaK — Wed, 09 Aug 2017 20:28:01 GMT

Thank you thank you thank you 😄
It worked!!!

Re: sas variable incorrect diaplay

Tom — Thu, 10 Aug 2017 00:59:14 GMT

If it is really an ID then you probably will want to read it as character instead of reading it as a number. 14 digits is close to the maximum integer that SAS can store uniquely in a numeric variable.

23    data _null_;
24      x=constant('exactint');
25      put x= comma24. ;
26    run;

x=9,007,199,254,740,992